


Winter Wonderland

by illusive_delusions



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Christmas fic, F/M, Fluff, also in the book the path they walk down is called lovers lane so asdfghjkl, cheesy asf, not seasonal, seriously tooth rotting, take these pure sweet kids away from me they’re too precious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 14:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15342150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illusive_delusions/pseuds/illusive_delusions
Summary: Anne and Gilbert take an evening walk and indulge in their inner children.





	Winter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been writing really cheesy, self-serving, kinda slap-dash fic since I finished season 2 and this is my first attempt at posting it because THESE TWO physically hurt my soul and I needed an outlet. This is really dumb and I wrote it pretty hastily but Anne and Gil need more fic so yeah. Also I saw someone on tumblr talking about needed a fix where Gilbert hears Anne singing and, like, how could I resist?

The atmosphere in the Avonlea schoolhouse was a remarkably pleasant one given the state of the weather outside. It would seem that the residents of Prince Edward Island were in for a white Christmas if the snow storms continued on as they had been for the past several weeks, but the high snow banks and drifts and mucky walking paths outside did nothing to deter the buzz of excitement amongst Miss Stacy’s students, perched warmly as they were inside the bright little school building which had become remarkably close to cosy as the harsh Canadian winter descended upon the island. 

Indoors, six bright-eyed scholars sat cross-legged on the floor around Ms. Stacy. The small group who sat enraptured about their teacher represented the best and brightest of Avonlea who were preparing for the Queen’s College Entrance Exams coming in the spring. 

Jane Andrews, Ruby Gillis, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloan, Moody McPherson, Gilbert Blythe, and Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had dedicated themselves fully to their preparations all school year and, as Christmas crept upon them, they were all fairly well exhausted and overworked, although their youth combated the symptoms well enough. 

As the clock ticked down the final seconds of the last Queen’s Prep class until the New Year, Ms. Stacy looked around at her pupils with all the pride and hope that the festive season warranted. With a bright smile she bid the kids to put aside their Latin readers and pack up for the semester, ensuring that every hat and scarf was collected from the mud room as they scampered off into the clear blue-grey evening with the unique joy of children at Christmastime in their hearts. 

The first strains of twilight were playing about the horizon by the time the students exited their schoolhouse, and Ms. Stacy watched from the windows as the children paired off amongst themselves to begin the slow journey home, noting with extreme interest the figures furthest from the pack heading not to the road but to the path through the woods leading to Green Gables. A lanky, slender girl with auburn braids blowing in the winter chill, and a tall boy with gentle brown curls walking side by side through the wintry dusk. They cut quite the charming pair in the moonlight, their teacher thought to herself with a knowing grin as they rounded the corner and disappeared from view. Quite the charming pair indeed. 

Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had mourned deeply the day that Diana Barry had announced that she would not be attending Ms. Stacy’s Queen’s classes. For practically her entire stay at Green Gables, Anne had hardly been separated from her bosom friend, and walking without her through the woods after school had seemed an absolute death sentence at the time. 

Now, as Anne picked her way carefully across the field towards the woods with Gilbert Blythe, Anne had to fight to stop herself from acknowledging the small, traitorous corner of her brain which couldn’t help but rejoice in the quiet moments with Gilbert that her dear bosom friend’s absence afforded her. 

She’d never admit it to anyone, least of all him, but she had grown to appreciate immensely the opportunity to talk freely with Gil without anyone else’s prying eyes and baseless assumptions around. They still had so much to catch up with each other on from his time away, and every day seemed to bring new topics of conversation which Anne found herself bursting with the need to discuss with him. 

Of course, Anne reminded herself, this was how she was with all of her friends, and if she’d been walking here with Ruby Gillis or Jane Andrews or even Moody McPherson she would have felt and acted just the same. 

“Oh, don’t you just delight in this weather, Gilbert” she cried, extending her arms wide and spinning in a slow circle, taking in the gorgeous precipitation that had blanketed her little island in the purest white blossoms of winter. She tilted her head back and stuck out her tongue to catch a perfect crystalline flake in her mouth. 

Gilbert stopped to look back at her, the smile which Bash has taken to referring to as his “Anne smile” unconsciously breaking across his face as he took in her spinning form and outstretched arms. She looked like she was trying to hug the whole forest. 

“It is rather beautiful,” he admitted. 

“Rather beautiful? I’d say it’s downright heavenly!” Anne cried, setting her hands back at her sides and resuming her stride to meet him with a look of mild disapproval at his lack of romantical appreciation for the weather. 

One of the things Gilbert loved- er, rather, appreciated the most about Anne was her ability to make even an uncomfortable and damp walk home from school into something deserving of poetry. 

Although their walks were usually filled with much more conversation, Anne had evidently gotten lost in the forest of her imagination and was uncharacteristically silent. Gilbert didn’t mind though, and was content to stroll home in silence, sneaking glances at his companion and taking quiet pleasure in the contrast of her fiery hair against the stark backdrop of the evening sky. 

So wrapped up was he in his contemplation of red-on-white that he was actually startled by the small, sweet noise of a humming tune that suddenly burst forth from Anne’s lips. 

As he listened, enraptured by the sound, Anne absentmindedly began to sing aloud the tune which had caught her fancy. 

“Good king Wen-ces-las looked out, on the feast of Ste-phen, When the snow lay round a-bout, deep and crisp and e-ven,” 

Anne danced merrily in front of him, lost in the words and in the snow drifts, and when he didn’t stop her or look at her reproachfully when their eyes met the way Marilla might have, she continued her song sweeter and louder still. 

The familiar carol from this year’s Christmas panto took on a whole new life as Anne Shirley-Cuthbert breathed the lyrics out into the frigid dusk, and Gilbert found himself warmed to the tips of his toes by her voice. 

Angelic. That’s the word that came to him to describe the lilting sound of her song, and he thought she would have appreciated it’s poetry if he had said it aloud to her, but instead a full bellied laugh that reminded him of his father’s erupted from him, and before Anne had the chance to second guess her winter song, Gilbert added his deep voice to her high soprano and finished out the song with her, between her giggles over mutually missed words and a minor spat over the lyrics in the fourth verse. 

Before the last echo of “Good King Wenceslas” had finished reverberating around the trees, Anne had launched into “Angels We Have Heard on High” which jump started a heated discussion about whose Latin pronunciation was better, and pretty soon after Gilbert began with the first verse of “Silent Night” and on it went so that by the time the pair approached the gates of Green Gables, shouting the words of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” at the tops of their lungs, all considerations of things like tune and melody had been forgotten in the simple, childhood pleasure of singing Christmas carols. 

After several minutes of this nonsense at the gate, Marilla Cuthbert had finally been forced to call out from the porch at the two to stop their caterwauling and get Anne inside before she caught her death of cold, which of course sent the pair laughing so hard that Anne fell to the ground into a snow drift and their laughter started all over again. 

Later, after Marilla had pleasantly but forcefully sent Gilbert Blythe on his way home and had retrieved her girl from the snow, she wrapped a warm blanket around her charge and rolled her eyes as Anne prattled on about this and that. She was, however, secretly pleased that Anne was still quite up to her childlike fun — and with John Blythe’s son at that. She would never have spoken it aloud, but she was privately awestruck at Anne’s ability to face the world with such joy after all she had been through, and Marilla was thrilled that Anne and Gil had been able to share that kind of happy, carefree evening together. Thrilled indeed.


End file.
